Ехинген

Ehingen declared itself a Bierkulturstadt — a city of beer culture — and holds the title with Swabian thoroughness: its breweries, from family houses in town to the monastic-rooted Berg brewery on the hill, pour more than forty different beers, a density few places on earth can match, and the town has plotted a Bierwanderweg — a beer hiking trail through fields and villages from tap to tap, spa treatment by other means. Festivals, brewing seminars and cellar tours complete the curriculum.

The sober credentials are equally solid. Ehingen was for centuries the chief town of Further Austria on the Danube — Habsburg territory deep in Swabia — and its skyline of towers shows the standing: the mighty Gothic choir of St Blasius, the convent church of the Franciscans, and above all the Konviktskirche Herz Jesu, the former Jesuit college church whose Rococo interior of stucco and fresco is among the region's loveliest surprises. The Marktplatz with the Ritter fountain and stately gabled houses keeps the old administrative dignity; museums in the Ständehaus recall estates' assemblies under the double eagle.

Around town, the young Danube slides beneath wooded Alb slopes toward Ulm; the Alb-Donau country offers caves, beech ridges and the great karst spring pots within a short ride. Habsburg past, Rococo present tense, and a pilgrimage route measured in glasses: Ehingen balances devotion and refreshment like the old imperial town it is.